The Turkish alphabet () is a Latin-script alphabet used for writing the Turkish language, consisting of 29 letters, seven of which (Ç, Ğ, I, İ, Ö, Ş and Ü) have been modified from their Latin originals for the phonetic requirements of the language. This alphabet represents modern Turkish pronunciation with a high degree of accuracy and specificity. Mandated in 1928 as part of Atatürk's Reforms, it is the current official alphabet and the latest in a series of distinct alphabets used in different eras.
The Turkish alphabet has been the model for the official Latinization of several Turkic languages formerly written in the Arabic or Cyrillic script like Azerbaijani (1991), Turkmen (1993),Soyegov, M. New Turkmen Alphabet: several questions on its development and adoption and recently Kazakh (2021).
Letters
The following table presents the Turkish letters, the sounds they correspond to in International Phonetic Alphabet and how these can be approximated more or less by an English speaker.
UppercaseLowercaseName Name (IPA)ValueEnglish approximation A a a As a in father B b be As b in boy C c ce As j in joy Ç ç çe As ch in chair D d de As d in dog E e e As e in red F f fe As f in far G g ge , As the first g in garage Ğ ğ yumuşak ge , , () — H h he, ha, haş , As h in hot I ı ı Close back unrounded vowel, like in Korean Similar to o in ballot to a Turkish speaker's ears İ i i As ee in cheese J j je As s in measure K k ke, ka , , As k in keenSimilar to k in kit L l le , As l in love M m me As m in make N n ne As n in nice O o o As o in more Ö ö ö Open-mid front rounded vowel, like œu n French Similar to u in nurse, with lips rounded P p pe As p in pin R r re As tt in American English better S s se As s in song Ş ş şe As sh in show T t te As t in tick U u u As oo in tool Ü ü ü Close front rounded vowel, like u in French Similar to u in cute V v ve As v in vat Y y ye As y in yes Z z ze As z in zigzag Q q kû, kü , — — W w çift ve, double u — — X x iks — —
Of the 29 letters, eight are vowels (A, E, I, İ, O, Ö, U, Ü); the other 21 are consonants.
Dotted and dotless I are distinct letters in Turkish such that ⟨i⟩ becomes ⟨İ⟩ when capitalised, ⟨I⟩ being the capital form of ⟨ı⟩.
Turkish also adds a circumflex over the back vowels ⟨â⟩ and ⟨û⟩ following ⟨k⟩, ⟨g⟩, or ⟨l⟩ when these consonants represent , , and (instead of , , and ): â for and/or to indicate that the consonant before â is palatalised; e.g. means "profit", while means "snow". î for (no palatalisation implied, however lengthens the pronunciation of the vowel). û for and/or to indicate palatalisation.
In the case of length distinction, these letters are used for old Arabic and Persian borrowings from the Ottoman Turkish period, most of which have been eliminated from the language. Native Turkish words have no vowel length distinction. The combinations of , , and with and also mainly occur in loanwords, but may also occur in native Turkish compound words, as in the name Dilâçar (from + ).
Turkish orthography is highly regular and a word's pronunciation is usually identified by its spelling.
In Turkey between 1928 and 2013 the use of any non-Turkish letters, including the basic Latin letters Q, W, and X was banned from official government documents, such as street signs and brochures as well as public places, as they are only used in unassimilated loanwords. The letter forms part of the Kurdish alphabet but is not present in Turkish.
Distinctive features
Dotted and dotless I are separate letters, each with its own uppercase and lowercase forms. The lowercase form of I is ı, and the lowercase form of İ is i. (In the original law establishing the alphabet, the dotted İ came before the undotted I; now their places are reversed.) The letter J, however, uses a tittle in the same way English does, with a dotted lowercase version, and a dotless uppercase version.
Optional circumflex accents can be used with "â", "î" and "û" to disambiguate words with different meanings but otherwise the same spelling, or to indicate palatalisation of a preceding consonant (for example, while means "snow", means "profit"), or long vowels in loanwords, particularly from Arabic.
Software localisation
In software development, the Turkish alphabet is known for requiring special logic, particularly due to the varieties of i and their lowercase and uppercase versions. This has been called the Turkish-I problem.
History
Early reform proposals and alternate scripts The earliest known Turkic alphabet is the Orkhon script, also known as the Old Turkic alphabet, the first surviving evidence of which dates from the 7th century. In general, Turkic languages have been written in a number of different alphabets including Uyghur, Cyrillic, Arabic, Greek, Latin, and some other Asiatic writing systems.
Ottoman Turkish was written using a Turkish form of the Arabic script for over 1,000 years. It was structured to facilitate works that incorporated a great deal of Arabic and Persian vocabulary, as their spellings were etymological and preserved original roots. This created a specific learning curve, as highly formal and prestige versions of Turkish were densely packed with Arabic and Persian vocabulary. Not only would students need to learn the spellings of certain Arabic and Persian words, but some of these words were so specialized in literary speech that their spellings remained restricted to scholarly circles. However, it functioned differently regarding the Turkish part of the vocabulary. Although Ottoman Turkish was never formally standardized by a decree of law, words of Turkic origin followed consistent orthographic patterns over time which provided a framework for reading and writing. On the rare occasion a Turkic word had irregular spelling that had to be memorized, there was often a dialectal or historic phonetic rationale that would be validated by observing the speech of eastern dialects, Azeri, and Turkmen. Whereas Arabic is rich in consonants but poor in vowels, Turkish is the opposite; the script was thus inadequate at distinguishing certain Turkish vowels and the reader was forced to rely on context to differentiate certain words. The introduction of the telegraph in the 19th century exposed further weaknesses in the Arabic script, although this was buoyed to some degree by advances in the printing press and Ottoman Turkish keyboard typewriters.Zürcher, Erik Jan. Turkey: a modern history, p. 188. I.B.Tauris, 2004.
Some Turkish reformists promoted the adoption of the Latin script well before Atatürk's reforms. In 1862, during an earlier period of reform, the statesman Münuf Pasha advocated a reform of the alphabet. At the start of the 20th century similar proposals were made by several writers associated with the Young Turks movement, including Hüseyin Cahit, Abdullah Cevdet, and Celâl Nuri. The issue was raised again in 1923 during the first Economic Congress of the newly founded Turkish Republic, sparking a public debate that was to continue for several years.
A move away from the Arabic script was strongly opposed by conservative and religious elements. It was argued that Romanisation of the script would detach Turkey from the wider Islamic world, substituting a "foreign" (i.e. European) concept of national identity for the traditional sacred community. Others opposed Romanisation on practical grounds; at that time there was no suitable adaptation of the Latin script that could be used for Turkish phonemes. Some suggested that a better alternative might be to modify the Arabic script to introduce extra characters to better represent Turkish vowels.Gürçağlar, Şehnaz Tahir. The politics and poetics of translation in Turkey, 1923–1960, pp. 53–54. Rodopi, 2008. In 1926, however, the Turkic republics of the Soviet Union adopted the Latin script, giving a major boost to reformers in Turkey.
Turkish-speaking Armenians used the Mesrobian script to write the Bible and other books in Turkish for centuries. Karamanli Turkish was, similarly, written with a form of the Greek alphabet.
Atatürk himself had a longstanding conviction that the Turkish alphabet should be Latinised. He told Ruşen Eşref that he had been preoccupied with this idea during his time in Syria (1905–1907), and would later use a French-influenced Latinised rendering of Turkish in his private correspondence, as well as confide in Halide Edip in 1922 about his vision for a new alphabet. An early Latinisation of the Turkish language was made by Gyula Németh in his Türkische Grammatik, published in 1917, which had significant variations from the current script, for example using the Greek gamma where today's ğ would be used. Hagop Martayan (later Dilâçar) brought this to Mustafa Kemal's attention in the initial years after the book's publication but Kemal did not like this transcription. The encounter with Martayan and looking at Németh's transcription represented the first instance where Kemal would see a systematically Latinised version of Turkish.
Introduction of the modern Turkish alphabet
The current 29-letter Turkish alphabet was established as a personal initiative of the founder of the Turkish Republic, Mustafa Kemal Atatürk. It was a key step in the cultural part of Atatürk's Reforms, 2002 (the writing guide of the Turkish language) introduced following his consolidation of power. Having established a one-party state ruled by his Republican People's Party, Atatürk was able to sweep aside the previous opposition to implementing radical reform of the alphabet. He announced his plans in July 1928Nationalist Notes, TIME Magazine, July 23, 1928 and established a Language Commission () consisting of the following members:
Ragıp Hulusi Özden İbrahim Grantay Ahmet Cevat Emre Mehmet Emin Erişirgil İhsan Sungu Avni Başman Falih Rıfkı Atay Ruşen Eşref Ünaydın Yakup Kadri Karaosmanoğlu
The commission was responsible for adapting the Latin script to meet the phonetic requirements of the Turkish language. The resulting Latin alphabet was designed to reflect the actual sounds of spoken Turkish, rather than simply transcribing the old Ottoman script into a new form.Zürcher, p. 189
Atatürk himself was personally involved with the commission and proclaimed an "alphabet mobilisation" to publicise the changes. He toured the country explaining the new system of writing and encouraging the rapid adoption of the new alphabet. The Language Commission proposed a five-year transition period; Atatürk saw this as far too long and reduced it to three months., p. 55 The change was formalised by the Turkish Republic's law number 1353, the Law on the Adoption and Implementation of the Turkish Alphabet, passed on 1 November 1928. Starting 1 December 1928, newspapers, magazines, subtitles in movies, advertisement and signs had to be written with the letters of the new alphabet. From 1 January 1929, the use of the new alphabet was compulsory in all public communications as well the internal communications of banks and political or social organisations. Books had to be printed with the new alphabet as of 1 January 1929 as well. The civil population was allowed to use the old alphabet in their transactions with the institutions until 1 June 1929.
In the Sanjak of Alexandretta (today's province of Hatay), which was at that time under French control and would later join Turkey, the local Turkish-language newspapers adopted the Latin alphabet only in 1934.
The reforms were also backed up by the Law on Copyrights, issued in 1934, encouraging and strengthening the private publishing sector.Press and Publications in Turkey, Newspot, June 2006, published by the Office of the Prime Minister, Directorate General of Press and Information. In 1939, the First Turkish Publications Congress was organised in Ankara for discussing issues such as copyright, printing, progress on improving the literacy rate and scientific publications, with the attendance of 186 deputies.